


Cardboard Boxes Took Us Miles

by thescrewtapedemos



Category: Homestuck
Genre: Alternate Universe - Human, Alternate Universe - Road Trip, F/F, Implied/Referenced Homophobia
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2012-07-18
Updated: 2012-07-18
Packaged: 2017-11-10 05:38:04
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Underage
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,529
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/462776
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/thescrewtapedemos/pseuds/thescrewtapedemos
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>You're standing in the ocean with a beautiful girl and you can't remember quite how to say that you love her.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Cardboard Boxes Took Us Miles

**Author's Note:**

> Title from the lyrics of the song Inevitable by Anberlin

You tell your dad at seven PM on a Wednesday in April. It's raining in Seattle and when you mention the L-word he tells you to _get the fuck out of my house_. He says it quiet. You walk out with the clothes you're wearing and the keys to a shitty blue 1985 Toyota Corolla. 

An hour later you pull up in front of a run-down house and knock on the peeling paint of the door. Vriska opens it easily, ignoring the screaming from the room behind her. She's carrying a crowbar, and you know enough to know not to ask. 

She looks at you over her aviators and her eyes are too blue and too sharp. 

“Let's go,” you tell her and gesture at your car. 

“Well shit, 'Rezi,” she says gleefully and gets in the passenger side. 

~O~

You pull off to the side of the road after you leave the city behind and stare out the windshield until the rain pounding the glass blurs. 

Vriska touches your cheek and tells you to get into the backseat. 

“Where do you want to go?” she whispers between kisses. You're shaking under her fingers and you whisper back _anywhere but here_. She doesn't mention the wetness of your cheeks and you don't thank her for holding you together the only way she knows how. 

You curl up in the passenger side seat and let Vriska take the wheel. She sets a mini-pack of tissues on the dashboard and just looks out the windshield when you take them. 

~O~

You wake up to the sun on your eyelids baking salt-trails to your cheeks. Vriska snores in the driver’s seat. 

You wake her by opening the door. She crawls half-out the window, elbows resting on the roof, as you stretch towards the sky. It's chilly, and you smell evergreens. 

“Where are we?” You sound husky. You wonder if you have any water in the car. 

“Somewhere in Montana, I think.” She rubs her eyes carelessly and when her hands come away her eyeliner is smeared in dark wisps down her cheeks. 

“Did you actually plan a route?” you ask incredulously. Montana is a long way away. Suddenly, you feel small and a little scared. You want to go home. 

_Get the fuck out of my house_. 

Vriska throws her head back and crows with laughter like some Hollywood diva, teeth glinting in the sun. She looks larger than life, intense and kinda dangerous. 

“I thought it didn't matter, 'Rezi baby!” She slaps the roof and grins at you. 

It lights you up inside, a little bit, and courage was facing your fears, right?

“It doesn't,” you decide, and get back in. 

~O~

She parks down the street from a run-down motel when you tell her you're hungry. 

“We don't have any money-,” you begin, but she just taps your lips with a finger and winks. You had wondered why she'd brought the crowbar. 

She pulls her hood over her head as she walks over and kicks the cord of the vending machine out of the wall. You look away as she climbs on top of the machine and pries at the door with the crowbar. You think you should feel bad about this, but there's a big hole where your moral compass used to be. 

She runs back, flushed and laughing, arms full of candy and gum and chips. You stare as she drops it all into your lap, heaping it up. The corner of a chip bag scratches against you arm, warm from Vriska's hands. 

“We need food,” she says simply. You don't say anything back, but you can't help digging a hand into the glittering pile. It spills between your legs and over your thighs like pirate treasure. You think Vriska would have made a good pirate. 

She's looking at the horizon when you look at her, licking her lips like she wants to eat it. When she notices you staring she grins at you with more teeth than happiness. 

“Where to next, baby girl?” she says, and you shrug. 

~O~

You pull to a stop in the Badlands National Park, South Dakota, and climb out. It's like walking on the surface of Mars, like someone broke a sunset and scattered the jagged shapes on the earth. 

The heat makes you gasp for breath. 

When she comes to stand next to you, you don't flinch when she grabs your arm too tightly. Her teeth are bared and her hair whips across her face, gets caught in her shiny chapstick. There's a defensive cast to the distance between her feet and the curve of her back. 

“I hate it,” she mutters to you. Her fingernails are digging in a little too deep. “I hate feeling small.” 

You touch her hand and she shivers, nails pinching for a moment. You don't know how to speak. You've forgotten how. 

“Sometimes I want to just...” She stops for a moment and kicks ineffectual ridges into the dirt. “Hurt them. Everyone. Everyone in the world.” Her teeth are bared and her sunglasses glint from the drivers seat of the car a few feet away. She looks like a wild animal, so gorgeous. 

“You couldn't win,” you whisper numbly. 

She pulls back like you burned her and you feel your ribs creaking under the weight of the words you don't know how to phrase, how the only thing she was hurting was herself, how big she was and how much space she took up in you now. 

“Fuck you!” she hisses and leaves you in the red dust by the side of the road. The sun beats down around you and it's hard to remember there was ever a color like _green_.

A family stops and offers you a ride. You decline, say you have one, say it's coming soon. They drive off with backwards concerned looks. 

You wait in the shade of an overhang, petting the exposed bones of the earth. You wait until the shadows have traveled their age-old sweeps on the ground, until the cars passing you turn on their headlights. 

She pulls up in the shitty blue Toyota and kicks the door handle till it opens. You stand and feel as stiff as the rocks around you. 

“About time,” you tell her. She snarls and rolls her shoulders. 

“You'd fucking murder me if I left you for real.” She pulls her aviators down over her eyes and you hear what she can't say hanging in the dusty air. 

_I hate that I can't leave you behind._

You slide into the seat like it was made for you or you were born for it. 

~O~

You tell her to pull into one of the tourist overlooks, deserted at midnight, too dark to see anything but the knife-sharp line of her profile and the shine of starlight off her dark glasses. You pull her into the backseat and lick her open like a revelation, holding her together the only way you know how. 

~O~

You drive during the day and pretend you're a boat riding the shimmering heat waves. Vriska drives at night, finds a station on the radio more static than music and croons along. You sleep with your eyes open and dream of wrapping her up in midnight blue. 

The backseat windows are a saga of dragons and pirates and spiders in blue sharpie, creeping across the glass to measure the hours in smeared marker. You don't really know what day of the week it is, you don't know where you are, you don't know where you're going. 

You don't exist outside the shitty blue Toyota and that's starting to be... okay. 

~O~

Vriska reaches the coast a little past one in the morning and for half a second you think she's going to drive right into the ocean. She pulls to a skidding stop in the sand and climbs out before you can even take your sluggish eyes from the horizon. There's a city a mile or two away that's too small to be New York. 

She's wading out into the water up to her waist when you struggle out and she throws her head back and screams at the sky. The waves are inky around her and you can't do anything but want her, hopelessly. 

She turns to you with her reckless grin and gestures. 

“Come on out, 'Rezi, water's really fucking cold!” 

“Don't go too far out,” you manage. She snorts indelicately and slaps the water. 

“You'd save me,” she says carelessly. “Now get out here, hot stuff.” 

You choke and start moving before you can catch yourself, before the idea of riptides cuts you off again. You couldn't say no if you wanted to. You're not sure you could say anything at all. 

You can't help the scream when you step in, up to your ankle. It's low and not much, but it's enough, you think. 

She tastes like saltwater when you kiss her, she's breathtaking when you cup her cheek, she's like a furnace against your chest. 

“Where to next, your honor?” she asks.

“Doesn't matter,” you say, but what you mean is _I love you_.


End file.
